Fasten your seat belts and prepare for your journey into the Future! Its here, finally! 11th May 2009, Micro Focus Live comes to your Desktop!

And what a build up it has been! The Micro Focus Live team has absolutely enjoyed working on this projects, and we spent long hours working on every little details to make this journey as pefect as possible for you. We really appreciate the support you have all shown us so far, and with over 3000 registrations to the event - is simply the most amazing response!

Over the next 3 days we will be delivering a series of live Keynotes and Discussion Panel sessions, covering an array of topics. From Modernization, latest COBOL development tools and its future to Data Management, and the ultimate cost efficiency stratgy - the CLOUD!

So we will be kicking of today with a Key Note from Stephen Kelly, our CEO, followed by a live business discussion panel on Cloud Computing. Dont miss the Developer panels on COBOL Futures and Developer tools!

So get plugged in - and enjoy the show. Oh yes, dont forget to leave loads of comments - we would love to hear from you.

Do you know how many different countries/locations are participating in Micro Focus Live?

I'm coming to the end of a week where most of it seems to have been spent reviewing either pre-recorded presentations or preparing for the live content for next week's event. I've just realized that I've been watching presentations and videos by Micro Focus staff, analysts, industry commentators and, especially, customers from the following locations (in no particular order):

San Diego CA, Mountain View CA, Singapore, New Delhi, Madrid, Sydney, Raleigh NC, St. Petersburg FL, Redmond WA, Rockville MA, France, Brazil, Italy, Foster City CA, San Francisco CA and, of course, Newbury.

I'm sure I've missed a few but I think this gives some idea of just how geographically dispersed the whole team is. Looking at the registrations we've had so far, it looks like every continent will be represented by the attendees (OK, perhaps representation from Antartica will be a little light!)

This truely is a global event and we could never have had such broad participation with a physical event.

This is by far the most exciting project I have worked on - I must admit. It was a lot of fun, and it has been lovely watching it come together. What you ask?! I can let you in on too much just yet, but here is a little teaser. Meet the COBOLATOR!



It will be premiering exclusively on Micro Focus Live on the 11th May! So if you have not signed up yet, Sign up FREE now!

I've been reviewing a lot of Micro Focus Live presentations and videos from industry experts and customers that have already started work on their Cloud deployments over the past few days ready for the full launch on May 11th.

I've noticed some very clear themes emerging:

• The drive is on in IT to cut costs. I know - that's a "duh!" statement but it is real and, whatever concerns some organizations may have about making the move to the Cloud, they all agree that the benefits of "pay as you go", scalable resources, shifting from Capital Expense to Operating Expense, or outsourcing non-critical systems are all real opportunities to cut costs and maintain or improve services
• There are concerns about vendor lock-in and data security but the tipping point where those concerns are outweighed by cost or flexibility benefits varties across systems and some applications or organizations will be able to move more quickly than others
• At some point in the next 3 - 5 years, everyone involved with IT today will have something in their portfolio affected by the Cloud.

OK, nothing particularly earth shattering here but it is clear that there is a wide variety of experience and information being provided at Micro Focus Live and for anyone trying to work out what the potential benefits and opportunities, as well as how to make the move with the least risk this really is a unique collection of great resources.

I am so delighted to say the number of registrations has crossed the 2000 mark today! Hurray!

Thank you to every one of you who has signed up to show support for this event. For those who have been putting this off - are you sure you want to miss out on this?!

We have several exciting new speakers confirmed. We have David Chappell appearing, for those of you who have heard him speak before - isn't he amazing?! I was reading on his website earlier, and it mentioned a quote from Don Cox about how much he loved listening to him.

Lets not forget, Eddie Amos, Bob Ellsworth appearing from Microsoft. Brian Wallace from CSC, Jim Johnson from Standish Group, and Dale Vecchio from Gartner. All of them live, and online directly to your Desktop! Exclusively at Micro Focus Live.

So if you have not signed up yet, and dont want to miss out on all the great content, speakers, excitement and buzz - its not too late. Sign up now at: www.microfocuslive.com.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that you could still be in with a chance to win a Guitar Hero game if you sign up now?! So what are you waiting for?! www.microfocuslive.com

Apparently Java is becoming the new COBOL (see http://bit.ly/YiGrU)

Coming from someone working for a COBOL company you might expect a certain point of view - and I'm not going to disappoint! I suspect the article was trying to associate Java with the perceived weaknesses (only perceived, definitely not real) of COBOL - being "old fashioned" and slow to embrace new technologies.

However, I will offer some defence of Java and take this comparison with COBOL as a positive thing - it has tried to replicate the amazing success of COBOL in several ways:

• Common language across many, many platforms
• "Write once, run anywhere" (but remember Micro Focus was doing this with COBOL Intermediate Code in the mid-1970s - way before Java byte code became popular)
• A huge infrastructure of supporting tools, training, staff, etc.

It was these attributes that made Gartner put COBOL in the "mature" category a little while ago - not aging. Definitely not a bad thing - this is what commercial organizations need, especially in these challenging times. If Java can do the same, then it is being successful.

However, Java did drop the ball in a number of key areas where COBOL is still superior:

• True cross-platform compatibility - a strong standards organization enforce source compatibility.
  
• Keeping the language current - a single vendor with little/no competition doesn't move the language forward quickly enough. The commuity process was supposed to make things faster but, in effect, the move forward has stalled.
• Incompatible run time engines and complexity of systems such J2EE have hampered deployments. JVMs from different vendors had too many quirks to allow application vendors to safely assume their application would be of high quality/performance on every platform
  
• Now that the language is essentially owned by a database company, what's going to happen next?
  

This isn't intended to a Java-bashing article. Far from it, I think it still has a lot of life and has value but I think it's worth remembering that COBOL has been, and continues to be, wildly successful and if Java can get close to that, then good luck to it.

Every major business process in your company is built on sophisticated applications. As a result, the stability of your business is often tied to the stability of your applications. So, how can you make sure that the applications that run your business are matched with the goals of your business -- goals like risk-avoidance.

One key way is to understand your applications. These applications have developed over the course of years or even decades, growing in size and complexity. In fact, many have become so complex that it is difficult for your IT team to adapt these systems to support new requirements. For instance, to support a new product line or to eliminate redundant functions following a merger. Making changes to applications without adequately understanding the repercussions is a recipe for problems. Uniformed changes could lead to a temporary outage of your operations… which is an unacceptable loss.

But your business processes must change, and that means that your applications must change. So, how do you overcome complexity? It is by understanding the structure and behavior of your applications. Armed with business intelligence about the structure and function of your applications, managers can better choose priorities for development teams. And developers can ensure that the changes they make won’t affect other core systems.

At Micro Focus Live, we’ll take a look at this concept of application understanding from both the management side and the technical side. You’ll learn how managers can plan modernization activities that yield the biggest returns for your business. And you’ll see how development teams can quickly deliver on these requirements, emptying their development queues.